ON the day he was told the results of an HIV test were negative, Vincent Chikeweze would have been entitled to feel relieved.

But he’s only four and oblivious to his good fortune.

Besides, it was the same day that Vincent and his sister Sosten, eight, were told that his mother Christina had died of AIDS.

It was only on his visit to hospital for his test results that doctors told him his mother had passed away.

She was another victim of the AIDS pandemic that has killed 50,000 people in Malawi in recent years.

Vincent’s news came on the day the Record visited his village with Scottish charity Mary’s Meals to see their food aid programme in action.

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A million people, more than 10 per cent of Malawi’s population, are living with HIV, the virus that leads to the killer disease. More than 170,000 are children under the age of 14.

More than 100,000 of the kids fed daily in Malawi by Mary’s Meals are, like Vincent, AIDS orphans. Most live in rural areas.

Vincent is now looked after by his grandmother Ellen Chikeweze, 63, along with three brothers and sisters and two cousins. His aunt also died from AIDS.

They live in Ndalama, a typical poor village of tin-roofed huts, where Mary’s Meals provide food to a school and Under Six centre.

Ellen said she could not tell her grandson his mother had died in December. The boy had been badly affected when she was taken to hospital. He has barely spoken since and only recently began to smile again.

Ellen said: “In Malawi, it is not for the grandmother to tell a boy like Vincent that his mother is dead.

“People in the village told him that but I said she was in hospital and she would come back.”

It was only when Vincent went to hospital that the truth came out. Ellen said: “He was asking doctors where his mother was.

“Vincent has taken the death of his mother very badly. I think now he is understanding it.

“He is a very sad boy and you can see that in his eyes. He is not like his brothers and sisters.”

Mary’s Meals’ intervention at the Under Six centre and the free school is a lifeline for her family. She said: “I send the children because if I did not, I would not know if they would be fed.

“They will all go to primary school but I have no money to send them to secondary school.

“I worry that they will become thieves because they will find it hard to find enough money for food.”

Ellen is too old to find work in the nearby tea estates, which pay 750 Kwacha – about £1 – a day for piece work. Job opportunities are scarce and there is little chance of the kids getting proper work.

In Malawi, each family knows how hunger progresses – beginning with low energy and motivation and developing to sleepiness and serious illness.

And Marie Da Silva knows all about the devastation caused by AIDS. She lost 15 relatives in the epidemic, including her father and her two brothers.

Marie worked as a nanny in the US for 19 years and returned home to Malawi, where her own loss inspired her in 2002 to open the Jacaranda School for Orphans in Limbe, beside Blantyre. It took over her own home.

She said: “We have 428 children at Jacaranda and 98 per cent of them are AIDS orphans. It sounds disturbing but that is the reality we face.

“Seventy-two have HIV but we try to give everyone the most normal lives they can have.”

Marie set up her school in the same year Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow opened his first Mary’s Meals kitchen in a Malawi school.

She struggled for years to feed and educate the children on what money she could raise. Mary’s Meals stepped in with funding in 2010. Marie said that was a potential lifesaver.

The intervention came through some networking the two did in Los Angeles when both were at the CNN Heroes Awards, where Magnus was being recognised.

Marie had been given the same honour two years before and was there as a guest. She said: “We were both unlikely guests at a fancy event in America but we had so much in common.

“I told him that the cost of food at Jacaranda was a heavy burden and that any help he could give would improve things immeasurably for us.

“Mary’s Meals moved into the school and it was a revolution for us. Children who receive HIV medicine on empty stomachs do not get the benefit. If they are weak from lack of food it doesn’t matter if they receive the drugs or not.

“I would see them develop sores and they would become so run-down. I would look at their faces and see such sadness but having nutritious food every day really helped us make a massive step forward.

“Look at our kids – you cannot tell who has HIV and who has not. They are all happy and enjoying their lives.”

Orphaned Tionge is living with HIV and dreams of going to secondary school if her aunt and uncle can afford fees of £55-a-year (Image: Chris Watt)

Tionge Bandwe, 16, has become used to living with HIV since her mother died of AIDS in 2007, aged 31.

Tionge suffered from tuberculosis when she was five and has faced a daily battle to eat enough to stay strong. She lives in the village of Ntungulutsi, in the south of Malawi, with her aunt Bridget.

Tionge looks years younger than her age and is still at primary school but hopes her aunt and uncle will find the £55 a year she needs for secondary school education.

She keeps her HIV secret so she won’t be shunned. She said: “I don’t tell anyone because I don’t want to be different.

“The illness happens a lot in the village but I try not to worry. I get free medication.”

Bridget said Mary’s Meals coming to Ntungulutsi four years ago was a Godsend for Tionge and her seven siblings.

She said: “The food is nutritious and we know it will be there every day. We owe so much to Mary’s Meals.”